Recently, larger-scale and more complicated systems have constituted web applications utilized on a WWW (World Wide Web)-based network such as the Internet. Thus, much time and labor is required by web application managers to understand and maintain the whole system. However, emerging requirements, which were unexpected during system construction, may necessitate the reconfiguration of the existing system. Furthermore, in order to add new requirements to the existing system, the existing system may be changed while maintaining the advantages of the system.
A conventional technique for reconfiguring an existing system to a novel system is based on information contained in the specifications of a web application (refer to, for example, Yasunori and Ikuyo). Another method is to use reverse engineering of a web site to understand the configuration of the whole web site by for example, identifying web contents and objects generated and discovering correlations among them, so that a web site manager can understand and maintain the functions of the whole web site (refer to, for example, Tilley). The existing system can also be changed and reconfigured by analyzing programs running on a server (refer to, for example, Hassan).
However, for the technique of reconfiguring a system on the basis of information contained in the specifications of a web application as disclosed in Yasunori and Ikuyo, it must be a precondition that there exist specifications that enable the system to be analyzed and that the specifications are always correctly maintained. However, not all systems actually in operation have specifications. Furthermore, the time required to maintain the specifications is not negligible. Consequently, this technique is not practical in every respect.
Furthermore, static web contents are dealt with by the method of using reverse engineering of a web site to allow a web site manager to understand and maintain the functions of the whole web site as disclosed in Tilley. Reverse engineering of web contents such as JSP (JavaServer Pages™: a trademark of SUN Microsystems) and Servlet which have recently been utilized and which are dynamically generated on a server has not been realized yet.
Moreover, the technique of analyzing programs running on a server to change and reconfigure an existing system has the advantage of being able to analyze processes executed on the server such as operations of a database as disclosed in Hassan. However, since actual web applications are developed by various methods, an analysis program must be created for each of these developing methods. Furthermore, the loss of a source code or the like on the server makes it impossible to analyze the programs.
In view of the above problems, it is an object of the present invention to use objects and web contents dynamically generated on a server to generate a web application model to support a change or reconstruction of a system.